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ICYMI: Corcoran Goes Full Trump

Posted January 31, 2018

ICYMI: Corcoran Goes Full Trump

Republicans Keep Racing to the Right

Who’s the Trumpiest of them all? That’s become the central question in the Republican gubernatorial race. On Monday, just as Ron DeSantis was launching his campaign with a paean to the President, House Speaker Richard Corcoran released a new “despicable,” “indecent” ad that made clear that Corcoran is running to be Florida’s very own mini-Trump. As the Tampa Bay Times editorial board wrote, that strategy may work with a far right Republican primary voters, but “race-baiting is not a leadership skill” and “it’s a bad look for anyone who wants to be governor.”

Corcoran’s new ad and DeSantis’ Trump-esque campaign launch have already “shift[ed] the race for the Republican nomination to the far right, where immigration will be red meat for primary voters.” With Adam Putnam fully embracing his inner Donald over the past six months, it’s now clear that the entire Republican gubernatorial field intends to borrow heavily from Trump’s divisive, hateful playbook.

Even by the gutter standards of modern times, the television ad that Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran began to air this week is despicable. The ad uses the accidental death of a woman in California to frame a national debate on immigration through the lens of a terrified white woman being gunned down by a bearded man in a hoodie. Race-baiting is not a leadership skill, it’s a bad look for anyone who wants to be governor, and it also doesn’t serve the interests of America’s third-largest state in crafting a smarter immigration policy.

Corcoran knows that anti-immigrant rhetoric and xenophobe-baiting tactics gave rise and voice to a loud voter base and shaped a platform for Donald Trump, elected him president against all odds, and by God, he’s going there, too.No matter how nasty, no matter how hurtful, no matter how distasteful.